“The Suffering Middle Ages” gives an interview. “The Suffering Middle Ages”: what is actually depicted in the miniatures with “cheerful” captions Lawyers in the Middle Ages were great entertainers

Who would have thought that medieval miniatures would spread across RuNet aggregator sites and Russian-language public pages on social networks. Or rather, macros made from them. As a rule, all these funny pictures come from one source - a public page that is rapidly gaining subscribers on the social network VKontakte "The Suffering Middle Ages". Although, of course, it is almost never indicated: admins love to borrow content from each other and even mark the kidnapped Sabine women with their watermarks. After all, after this, the stolen image, as it were, becomes your own, dear. A subscriber to several public pages at once is regularly attacked by clones in the news feed. Often the same pictures are posted in several public pages almost simultaneously.

Again, Navalny, a big fan of memes, subscribed to updates.

For a provider of original images, such interest from those scouring for fresh content is still a sign of success. They are not mentioned on social networks - they are mentioned in articles about “the most interesting new public pages”; again, Navalny, a big fan of memes, subscribed to updates. It is characteristic that with adme. ru article about “The Suffering Middle Ages” deleted after someone complained about insulting religious feelings. But this also became additional “black PR” for the “Suffering Middle Ages”. The public is very capable of offending especially sensitive readers, because it mocks many things. Here you go religious theme in a particularly rich assortment, and homosexuals, And nationalists. The list goes on. The public cannot avoid comparisons with the legacy of Monty Python - which certainly irritate the creators of The Suffering Middle Ages. And because this is a similar kind of cynicism and satire, which allowed the Pythons to push bishops in carriages and force children from the family of an Irish Catholic to sing in chorus « Every sperm is sacred» or crucified - chant « Always look on the bright side of life» . And because Monty Python and the Holy Grail remains one of the main examples of satirical medievalism. But the main thing is because the visual style of the crazy videos created by Terry Gilliam used those same medieval miniatures (as well as paintings by Botticelli, drawings by Blake etc. ) and turned to the subjects of marginalia drawings in the margins of manuscripts. Similar animation can be seen in the film series The Medieval Lives of Terry Jones, where the Monty Python showrunner and popular historian carefully destroyed the stereotypes associated with medieval life.

However, in order to find the closest relatives of the “Suffering Middle Ages”, it is not necessary to talk about Monty Python or the laughter culture of the Middle Ages. Outside the RuNet, “medieval” memes and macros have long become common place. There are thematic blogs where medieval miniatures are photoshopped and animated, for example, Scorpion Dagger. There are collections on aggregator sites like Buzzfeed. There are groups on social networks. For example, Discarding images with a blog on Tumblr; Apparently, the public and group are run by a medievalist from Poland. Other examples are more modest in number of subscribers Marginalia And Folia Magazine.

Apparently, the administrators of the “Suffering Middle Ages” actively borrow source material from similar communities (sometimes you can see how a macro appears in the public the next day after posting the original picture in another group). But the way the images are presented varies greatly. So, Discarding images limited to a text commentary on the posted picture. And for the “Suffering Middle Ages” this is only one of the means used. To the credit of “The Suffering Middle Ages,” the public does not present itself as something unique; for example, it provides links to English-language blogs with similar topics. And he writes about his unexpected popularity not without sarcasm, accompanying this with corresponding illustrations. However, there is clearly some coquetry in this self-irony, and it also does not interfere with the sale of T-shirts with prints. And between the original macros from the miniatures they fit clumsy collages and macros borrowed from the Internet, sometimes of a venerable age. The “Suffering Middle Ages” does not disdain reproduce quite ancient but popular online memes - for example, made on a long-existing site Historic Tale Construction Kit, where you can rivet macros using parts of the Bayeux Tapestry.

It’s Jupiter castrating Saturn in a scene from The Romance of the Rose, and not just one creepy bearded dude cutting another’s balls.

Although most of the images are Western European miniatures, sometimes one cannot do without ancient Russian bracers or Orthodox images. There is no unity of language either - the macros have both Russian and English signatures. Another fundamental difference between the “Suffering Middle Ages” and communities like Discarding images - lack of indication of the origin of the images and their real content. And, judging by the regular requests in the comments “Tell me the name of the original plz”, this would not hurt subscribers. Maybe they don't need to know what for

The “Suffering Middle Ages” project appeared in 2012 as a joke among history students and gained enormous popularity. Hundreds of thousands of subscribers on VKontakte and Facebook, numerous imitators, and very soon the first book based on community materials will be published! Pre-orders are already open in online bookstores across the country.

On the eve of the release of “The Suffering Middle Ages” on paper, Konstantin Meftakhudinov, one of the founding fathers of the project, gave an interview to “Russian Blogger”.

Konstantin, thank you for agreeing to talk with us. Tell me, what does the Middle Ages mean to you? Profession, hobby, passion? Maybe business?

When it started, it is clear that we did not think about any business. It was pure passion, a passion that continues to this day.

Thank you for that! Now you have 300,000 subscribers on Vkontakte and almost 140,000 on Facebook. Are you recognized on the streets?

No, not on the streets.

I think you still have everything ahead of you. Necessarily.

I don’t even know if I hope so or am afraid.

Konstantin, what do you, as a historian, think about the medieval period? He has a very bad reputation. We call it the dark times, when everyone had the plague and people were burned at the stake. Was this really the darkest period in human history?

There are two myths about the Middle Ages. Some people think, as you described, that it was a grim thing where you live to be 20 and die of the plague. Moreover, you have 15 children, half of whom will also die from the plague the day after tomorrow. At the same time, the myth of the dark Middle Ages was formed quite early, in the 15th-16th centuries, when the term “Middle Ages” was coined to describe the gap between antiquity and modern times. Moreover, most of the “witches” were burned in the 15th century, that is, in the era of the New Age, or the Renaissance, whatever you like. In the Middle Ages, the fires of the Inquisition did not burn as brightly as in modern times.

On the other hand, there is a myth about a wonderful time when beautiful knights ride to save beautiful princesses by killing beautiful dragons.

Both of these myths are very persistent, and both do not accurately describe the era that was. The time then was both wonderful and terrible at the same time. In general, everything is as it is now. Now, too, a lot of interesting things are happening, and at the same time there is a lot of bad things.

Do you think there are many parallels between those times and our current reality?

Some historians do not express such an opinion on the pages of their monographs, but secretly believe that the Middle Ages did not end. And modern people are not much different from medieval ones.

There are always parallels. When you see something similar, they appear on their own. For example, the medieval image of the Trinity, which can be seen on the cover of our book, and the canonical image of the leaders of the communist world: Lenin, Marx, Engels. Sometimes, looking back, I want to say: “What a wild Middle Ages it is all around!”

Many of the pictures from your public are funny even without a caption. Was it the artist’s idea to make them like this, or did he honestly try to draw something beautiful, serious, pious, but what happened was what happened?

It depends. This is exactly what is written in our book. In different cases, the artist wanted to depict different things. Sometimes he drew some kind of apostle-evangelist, and the result was, for example, a wonderful picture where a lion says: yes, I am the king of beasts, but this is a fucking vacuum cleaner! That is, they could draw in all seriousness what might seem funny to us now.

On the other hand, it is clear that humor was also inherent in the Middle Ages, and they often drew pictures to laugh and not die of boredom when reading some huge legal code. This was also some kind of entertainment for them.

Our legal codes could probably also use a little something fun every now and then.

Yes. In legal codes, creatures with huge genitals were often depicted. This would probably look good in some Civil Code.

Lawyers in the Middle Ages were great entertainers!

Back then everyone was an entertainer. At least those who could write and read. That was the time.

There are very few Russian miniatures in your public page. Why? Were ours more serious, or did they just draw less?

Firstly, in Rus' it was a little worse with paints. Then, very few medieval manuscripts from the territory of Ancient Rus' have reached us. Here are the fires that destroyed manuscripts both in the West and here, and the Mongol-Tatar invasion, which destroyed a very significant layer of books. Therefore, much fewer miniatures from Ancient Rus' have reached us than from the West.

At the same time, it so happened that our public is focused more on Western Europe than, say, Byzantium. This is partly due to the fact that when we say “Middle Ages,” we always imagine Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris rather than Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.

While preparing for the interview, I learned that you now practically don’t draw anything yourself, but post what the participants send you.

Yes, our subscribers send us a lot of things, for which we thank them very much. But we ourselves, no, no, yes, we uncover Photoshop and do something like that.

Do you have many such contributors? Are there regular authors?

Which medieval artist do you think best described the era? Everyone knows Bosch. And besides him?

The Middle Ages are very large and, frankly, it is difficult to single out just one. Firstly, the names of most of the miniaturists who painted the manuscripts have not reached us. If there are names, then these are later authors, and not just medieval guys. Guys, because women didn’t draw very often, although one of them could be a scriptor - someone who rewrites manuscripts.

Of the artists we know, Giotto has had the greatest impact on our community. One of the first objects for our jokes was one of the angels from Giott’s crucifixion, who, together with the Mother of God, mourns Jesus taken down from the cross. One of our classmates compared his face to us when we have to get up at 7 am after we went to bed at 5, preparing for the seminar. He really is very suffering.

That is, we can say that he gave the name to the public?

Partly, yes.

Were there workshops for making handwritten books in nunneries?

I'm not an expert on this issue, but it seems like there were. Copying books is one of the forms of obedience for monks, because then, of course, there were no copying machines. This also became a reason for jokes, however, in the English-speaking environment: a monk is lying on the table, another one comes up to him and says: the printer is broken, bring another one.

So why not use women for this noble work? Moreover, very noble persons became abbess of the monasteries: sisters of emperors, and so on. Very influential, very powerful ladies in the world were in charge of these monasteries. And in general, monasteries were a very important thing for the Middle Ages; a very important layer of culture was preserved thanks to these monasteries.

Returning to the legal manuscripts that I now cannot get out of my head. Was there censorship in the Middle Ages?

There was no censorship as such, because there was no body that could censor. In our country, censorship is usually done by the state, and historian Robert Darnton recently wrote a very interesting book about this. It's called "Censors at Work: How the State Shapes Literature."

There was no official censorship in the Middle Ages, but there were cases when, for example, in Byzantium, iconoclasts tried to scrape icons off the walls. During the religious wars, during the Reformation, Protestants also destroyed icons, statues, and temple decorations.

There was a case when one Catholic grandee received a book about Spain, and he began to erase some bad sentences about Spain and rewrite them, adding phrases about what a wonderful country Spain is. But this book was in his personal library, that is, this is not censorship in the full sense of the word.

What about the persecution of heretical books? Everyone has read in historical novels that even a comma placed in the wrong place already casts doubt on the tenets of the Catholic faith. How did it go?

Yes, there were a number of texts that seemed to the Holy See to be not very suitable. Why, for example, was the same Giordano Bruno burned? Not because he said anything about the Sun, but because of his treatise on demonology. Moreover, he was offered several times to renounce his views, which were quite heretical and even in the eyes of modern people, rather strange and crazy, but he did not agree. Bruno almost proclaimed himself the Son of God; It is clear that the church did not really like this. Therefore, his works began to be banned, and he himself was burned.

Before us is the fresco by Simone Martini “The Vision of St. Ambrose” from the Chapel of St. Martin of Tours in Assisi. The Golden Legend, the most popular collection of instructive and fascinating stories in the Middle Ages, tells that one day Bishop Ambrose of Milan fell asleep on the altar during Mass, before reading the Scriptures. For a long time the servants did not dare to wake him up, and the deacon did not dare to read without his blessing. After some time, the bishop was nevertheless awakened, saying: “Sir, an hour has passed, and the people are very tired, and therefore they ordered the minister to read the Epistle.” He answered them: “Don’t be angry. For Martin, my brother, went to the Lord, but I celebrated the funeral mass for him and could not leave it without finishing the last prayer, although you so cruelly hurried me.”

This is a miniature “The Conception of Alexander the Great” from the “History of Alexander the Great” by the Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus in the famous edition of 1468-1475. According to a legend that spread after Alexander's death and affirmed his veneration as a supernatural being, his real father was not the Macedonian king Philip II, but Pharaoh Nectanebo, the last ruler of Egypt. According to ancient Egyptian beliefs, the heir to the pharaoh is born from the union of the queen with the god Amun, who appears to her in the guise of the ruling pharaoh. In late antique literature, this motif was reinterpreted in the spirit of an adventure novel: Nectanebo was portrayed as a magician and swindler who changed his appearance in order to seduce the queen. The miniature depicts this complex intrigue with the conventionality typical of this kind of iconography. Before us is a double duality: the double of the pharaoh turns out to be, firstly, Philip, who recognized the divine child (therefore he is present in the conception scene), and secondly, the demon Amun (the Egyptian deity for the medieval author is certainly a demon).

This is a miniature from a 13th-century bestiary depicting an asp charmer. Any poisonous snake can be called an asp, but in the bestiaries of the late 12th - 13th centuries it was usually depicted as winged and eared. To neutralize the asp, you need to lure it out of the hole, and to do this you need to read a spell or play the flute. Hearing these sounds, the asp presses one ear to the ground and plugs the other with its tail. In this way he is likened to a rich man who turns one ear to earthly goods and plugs the other with sin. Psalm 57 says in this regard: “Their poison is like the poison of a snake, like a deaf asp that stops its ears” (Ps. 57:5). In medieval bestiaries, the asp also becomes the personification of hell, defeated by Christ, according to the words of the 90th Psalm: “You will tread on the asp and the basilisk; You will trample the lion and the dragon” (Ps. 91:13).

This is the initial to the 13th Psalm from the psalter of Queen Ingeborg (France, c. 1200). It begins with the words, “The fool said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” (Ps. 13:1). These words, whispered by two demons into the ear of a madman, are written on his scroll. Another version of the illustration of the same psalm is a madman running with a mallet and a piece of bread in his hands, in accordance with the words “Will not all the workers of iniquity come to their senses, eating up my people as they eat bread” (Ps. 13:4).

Depicted here is Saint Francis of Assisi, who lived in Italy at the beginning of the 13th century and became famous, among other things, for receiving stigmata (wounds similar to the wounds of Christ) while fervently praying and meditating on the Passion of Christ. His vision is described differently in different versions of the life: in some, St. Francis sees a crucified, suffering cherub; in the officially accepted version, the crucified Christ himself appears to him with the wings of a cherub. This is part of a 15th-century polyptych in which Saint Francis, displaying the stigmata on his arms, legs and chest, is depicted next to the Archangel Michael slaying a dragon. This type of composition, in which saints from different eras stand together before Christ or the Mother of God, is called a “holy interview.”

This miniature from a 13th-century bestiary depicts an eagle owl being attacked by daytime birds. The eagle owl is “very lazy” and spends days and nights in tomb crypts and caves, which gives Hraban the Maurus, the author of the encyclopedic work “On the Nature of Things,” reason to compare him with sinners who love the darkness of sin and flee from the light of truth. In daylight, the eagle owl goes blind and becomes helpless. Therefore, when they see him, the daytime birds emit loud cries, calling their comrades, and together they rush at him, tear out his feathers and peck him. Likewise, a sinner, having come to the light of truth, would become a laughing stock for virtuous people and, being caught in sin, would bring upon himself a hail of reproaches.

Here is a fresco from the Roman catacombs of the 4th century. It depicts the story described in the Book of Numbers (22-25). The soothsayer Balaam rides on his donkey to curse the Jewish people by order of the Moabite king Balak. An angel with a sword blocks his way. Balaam himself does not see the angel, but he is seen by the donkey, who tries in every possible way to stop the unsuspecting soothsayer and eventually begins to speak. Hence the saying “Balaam’s donkey spoke.”

This is the tapestry “Vision” from the cycle “The Five Senses”, also called “The Lady with the Unicorn” (late 15th century). It is kept in the Cluny Museum in Paris. The unicorn here symbolizes purity and fidelity - thanks to the bestiary's story that a unicorn can only be caught by bringing a virgin into the forest. Attracted by her purity, the unicorn lays his head on her lap and falls asleep - and then the hunters can take possession of him. The image of the unicorn becomes a symbol of Christ, and the virgin - the Church and the Virgin Mary herself. Thus, the composition “Catching a Unicorn” may signify the mystical marriage of Christ and the Church. In the courtly version, the unicorn is a lover, attracted by the purity and beauty of his beloved.

This is the central part of a polyptych for the altar of the hospital chapel in Beaune by Rogier van der Weyden (1443-1452), dedicated to Last Judgment. Here the Archangel Michael is depicted weighing the good and evil deeds of a person brought before the court of the Most High. This plot is usually called the “weighing of the soul,” although in reality it is not the soul that is being weighed, but its deeds. There are trumpeting angels all around, heralding the end of the world. This type of composition is also known in images of the Judgment in ancient Egyptian art - where Osiris acts as a weigher.
Biblical sources include words from the Book of Job (“So let Him weigh me on the right scales, and God will know my innocence,” Job 31:6), the Book of the Prophet Daniel (“Tekel - you are weighed in the balance and found very light,” Dan 5:27), the Book of Proverbs of Solomon (“Faithful scales and weighing bowls are from the Lord; from Him are all the weights in the bag,” Prov. 16:11) and others. Of particular importance for the iconography of the Last Judgment in the art of the 14th-15th centuries was the fact that Vincent of Beauvais (1190-1264), the author of the Great Mirror, one of the most famous medieval encyclopedias, quoted the words of John Chrysostom about good and bad deeds that will be placed on the scales.